Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio marches forward

David Konow, 5th August 2012

Guillermo Del Toro’s name has been attached to many projects, including a redo of Pinocchio, and it would be very interesting to see what he could do with the classic story.

The original fairy tales are much darker than their Disney-ized counterparts, and Del Toro’s been delivering his own versions of dark good night stories like Pan’s Labyrinth.

Now the news has hit Deadline that an effects company called ShadowMachine will produce Pinocchio and guide the animation for the film. An especially cool development with all of this is stop-motion animation, which I’m a big fan of, is currently making a comeback with the upcoming films Frankenweenie and Para Norman, and apparently Del Toro’s Pinocchio will be stop motion too.

This isn’t a surprise considering Del Toro knows his monster movie history, and is a fan of the good old classic stuff we geeks all grew up on. We recently reported on Ray Harryhausen, the godfather of stop motion, turning 92 years old, and he must be very happy to see his influence still carrying on after all these years.

ShadowMachine is apparently a smaller company, and they’ll be working with the Jim Henson Company as well. This is the second big time movie ShadowMachine has been hired to work on so far, and it’s also a clear sign that this new version of Pinocchio is indeed taking some good steps forward. In a statement, the company has let it be known they’re very excited to be working on a project like this, which will take place between the first and second world war.

As this story was being finalized, Del Toro also told Collider that goth rocker Nick Cave will be doing the music for the film, and he’s also got some interesting casting choices lined up. He wants Tom Waits to play Geppetto, and Ron Perlman to play Stromboli.

It’s also good to see that with Pinocchio and Pacific Rim, Del Toro’s back in the saddle again, and has two pretty cool projects that should be hittin’ back to back if all works well. Although he can deliver a dark fairy tale that isn’t too gruesome for the young ‘uns like Pan’s Labyrinth, I’m very curious to see how Del Toro will potentially approach Pinocchio, and how it will be told through his wonderful prism.